


Southpaw

by quick



Category: Puyo Puyo (Video Games)
Genre: (I'm new to the fandom and haven't polished my interpretations of these characters yet), Character Study, Gen, Introspection, One Shot, Potential Slight OOC, slight AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-08
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-12 15:54:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28638087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quick/pseuds/quick
Summary: One day, a young boy with blue hair wakes up with a red eye and a red left hand. Not a problem, right?It is if you’re left-handed.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 26





	Southpaw

**Author's Note:**

> My latest obsession: The Puyo Puyo series. I enjoy playing Tetris a lot, and I had seen a character design from this game which intrigued me, so I put Puyo Puyo Tetris on my Steam wishlist, forgetting about it soon afterwards. This Christmas though, a friend of mine gifted me the game, and hilariously enough, despite buying the game for Tetris, I’ve become hooked on Puyo Puyo. Hooked on it enough to break my writer’s block and instill sort of life in me again. Hopefully it’ll last, because I’ve got a few more ideas written down for this series and I’d like to get through most (if not all) of them.
> 
> For now, though, take a seat and enjoy.

As far as towns went, Primp had to be one of the strangest of them all.

_“Crater!”_

Of course, that wasn’t to suggest that he knew any other towns that weren’t as strange as Primp—quite the contrary, he had never left the town that he called home. Still, even though Primp was small, it attracted quite a few different types of tourists to it, and of the vast array of different kinds of figures and faces that he’d seen growing up, none of whom even came close to the people that lived there. It was as though Primp was the epicenter of eccentricity.

_“Shooting Star!”_

It was probably the magic school that drew all the strangeness. The Primp School for Magic Arts, home to the magically inclined, whose faded brown brick skin and colourful Puyo statues clashed with the verdant green forests and cobalt blue rivers that he had surrounded himself with for most of his life. It was the biggest building in town; its raison d’etre, he’d once heard an old woman call it. It had been here since before Primp was even called Primp.

_“Gingerbread!”_

He’d seen it time and time again when he walked to the market for food, always stopping at the gate entrance to gaze wistfully at the building before continuing on. He’d watch for a few moments as colourful lights shone through the glass windows and wisps of magic escaped and fizzled into the air, before he continued to the market.

_“Fireworks!”_

If Sig didn’t linger too long, he couldn’t daydream the what-ifs and maybes.

_“BAYOEN!”_

△○□×

The autumn day that his life changed was no different. Not outwardly, anyway: a shimmering sun blazing overhead, with only a few pastel clouds dotting the bright blue horizon. The trees had begun to blush, some of them shedding leaves of vibrant red, orange and yellow to paint the dirt path that paved through Primp.

Yet when he opened his eyes, he immediately knew something was off.

Even under the deep murky haze of slumber, he could tell there was something different. Something had changed—there was a weight that wasn’t there before. A foreign object. It was as if someone had taped a lead weight to his left hand, and the weight had begun to slowly pull at him. Had begun to fish him from the sleepy depths of his dream—a dream of colourful Puyos and flung magical spells.

“Mnnnmm…” He mumbled in drowsy protest as he shifted beneath his covers, sleepily fighting off the pulling force with all his might.

Of course, since it was Sig, ‘all his might’ meant not so much at all. He was fighting a losing battle and he knew it—even as he tried to sink back beneath the ocean of dreams, he could feel his mind slowly start to start. Despite his protests, the gears began to turn and squeak, and his imagination whirred to life like an old-school projector.

“No… a ten chain…?” He grimaced as his dream turned sour. The boundary was beginning to crumble to pieces. Somewhere, he could vaguely hear a dream monster laughing its head off as it rained endless amounts of garbage Puyos on him, firing off spell after spell.

Finally, as the dream monster claimed its victory with a joyful cheer, the veneer shattered. His head lulled to the side. Sunlight started to pierce as he groggily cracked his eyelids open. A blue and red iris peeked through as light invaded his senses. He picked up the chirping of birds, barely audible from the window that he’d left open the night before.

“Oh boy…” he muttered, as everything finally clicked into place. He was awake, and there was nothing he could do about it.

Stifling a yawn, he raised his left hand upward to rub at his sore eyelids…

…and was met with a large, hulking red mass.

Sig blinked and all remaining wisps of fatigue coalescing into fascination as he stared at the foreign object that entered his vision.

It was an arm, he could tell that much, but it was not the left arm that he remembered having the night before. It was a visceral, bright red, its muscles heavily defined and its fingertips sharp and clawed. Experimentally, he flexed his left arm, and watched as the crimson-coloured limb twitched. Not satisfied, he tried to close his left hand into a fist and watched interestedly as the demonic hand did very much the same.

Sig’s brow furrowed, and his eyes narrowed to a squint as he eloquently summarized his thoughts on the matter.

“Ah.”

△○□×

He tried his best to ignore it, he really did, but it was a phenomenally difficult task—especially when zipping a zipper was all but impossible, and the slightest twitch of a finger could shred your shirt to pieces. It took him 45 minutes to get ready to go outside, and he’d nearly ruined his favourite shirt in the process, but he slipped out his house without too much trouble, catching the barest glimpse of his gargantuan left arm in the mirror as he shut the door behind him.

The trip was uneventful for the most part; in the beginning, he had swung his new arm all around, letting it float through the air and flexing it every which way he could think of, before the novelty of the arm had quickly worn off and turned into an underlying unease—like there were butterflies trapped in his stomach.

Still, no matter what he did or thought of, his arm stayed the same. Remained the same cardinal red. At one point on his walk, he had stopped and stared at his arm again, boring a hole with his half-lidded eyes and hoping that something would change—that he would blink, and everything would return to normal.

Nothing.

Sighing, he chased the thought away and kept walking aimlessly down the road. A breeze rustled the blushing leaves, and he inhaled deeply, turning his gaze straight up towards the sky. He smiled; at least the day was nice. Maybe he’d go bug catching in the forest later today if it stayed like this. 

“Oi! Kid! You with the blue hair!”

The voice sent a small wave of surprise zapping down his spine, and he cast his gaze back down to the path that he walked.

There was a woman standing in front of him on the path—more specifically, a woman holding an onyx-coloured cat puppet made of what appeared to be silk or felt. She had deep purple hair, and round spectacles that fronted a perpetually close-eyed and closed-mouthed smile. Despite her strange appearance, he recognized her. It was hard not to—not when she was such a common sight around town.

Sig waved his demonic arm, staggering slightly, “Hi, Miss Accord, hi Popoi.”

The magic teacher seemed surprised that he knew their names, which was strange considering he’d seen her many times before, either doing chores in town, or chaperoning her students out to the forests he loved to lurk in. Still, she recovered well, the smile which had momentarily slipped her face returning in full, “Hello Sigmund,” She said warmly.

Her cat puppet perked up and waved as well, “Ey there!”

Sig tilted his head to the side, “What are you doing out here?” He asked, “Isn’t it a school day?”

“It is,” Miss Accord replied, “What do you mean ‘out here?’”

“Yeah, we’re in school, kiddo!” The cat puppet agreed, lifting an arm to point to its side.

He turned to where Popoi was pointing where, sure enough, the puyo-topped magical academy stood tall and proud. Apparently he’d gotten lost in thought somewhere along his walk and gotten further than he’d thought, “Huh.”

“Sigmund,” Sig turned back to look at Miss Accord, who had creased her forehead and begun to frown, “Is everything alright?”

“Eh?”

“Your arm and eye, kiddo!” Popoi pointed at his clawed limb, “It’s all red ‘n evil!”

“Oh yeah. I woke up this morning and they were like this,” Sig hefted his arm to examine his newly changed arm, swallowing as the sharp claws seemed to glimmer in the sunlight. He paused, “Wait, my eye, too?”

Miss Accord nodded urgently, frown lines still etched deep into her expression.

“Huh.”

An uncomfortable pause flooded the air, as both Miss Accord and Popoi suddenly went silent, sharing a similar single glance between them. Sig went to scratch his cheek with his left hand, before he glanced at the newly transformed appendage and decided that wouldn’t be a good idea. Instead, he uncomfortably scratched with his right hand, his multicoloured stare at the magic teacher unbroken as she floundered for the right words.

Eventually, though, they came. With a rigid spine, an uncharacteristically menacing air and pursed lips, she asks, “Sigmund, have you been learning the dark arts?”

Sig blinks.

“What.”

“Dark arts, kiddo! Demon summoning! Possession! Curses! Purr-jury! Have you dabbled in the occult?”

“Uh, no.” Sig says, his normally flat voice somehow even flatter than before, “I woke up like this.”

Saying that saps the tension from Miss Accord—she visibly relaxed, deflating like a balloon, and the creases smoothened, “Oh, well that’s good then! It goes without saying, but the dark arts are not something to do without extensive studying and supervision.

Sig nods, “You don’t have to worry about that, anyway, Miss Accord. I couldn’t use the dark arts anyway.”

Miss Accord looked puzzled, “What do you mean?”

“I don’t have any magic potential.”

Miss Accord stared at him silently without a response. Sig scratched at his cheek with his left hand, wincing in pain as he accidentally raked his skin with his new claws.

Finally, after a silent standoff, Sig nodded, hefting his bag further up his waist, “Well, I gotta go, Miss Accord. Have a nice day.”

“Ah, yes. Have a good rest of your day, Sigmund,” Miss Accord said, that warm smile from earlier returning in full force.

“Bye.”

And off he went, maundering down the path as he continued into town. 

△○□×

Accord waited until Sig walked out of sight before she let her smile drop. The earlier troubled expression wove its way back onto her face.

Popoi glanced at her, “You sensed it too, nyeh?”

“Yes. Yes I did.”

“Do you think he realizes?”

Accord thought back to their conversation. How the cerulean-haired boy had, just for a split second, held a baleful look on his face. A sadness in his eyes. She shook her head.

“No. Whatever has happened, he’s genuinely unaware.”

“That’s just purr-fect,” Popoi sighed, his body rattling. “What will we do now?”

Accord then thought of the fire. The bright blue flame within him. The strange spirit that seemed to invisibly tail his every move. Her lips curled into a ghost of a smile.

“I have an idea.”

△○□×

“Hello there, Sig!” Behind the counter sat a man. More specifically, what remained of a man. His ivory white skeleton, with mismatched eyes and a wide, toothy smile, seemed to leer at Sig. His top hat and tailcoat were as prim and properly kept as ever, and a pair of spectacles rested on his face that all combined to cut an even more intimidating figure than anyone else Sig had met.

Of course, since Sig had known him for so long, the intimidation had worn off, “Hiya, Mister Bones,” Sig said warmly, waving his red arm at the kindly man.

Too late did he realize the mistake that he’d made. Dapper Bones snapped to attention, “HOLD IT!” He shouted, leaping to his feet.

Sig froze in place like a statue, a wave of unease flowing through his veins. _“What did I do?”_

Still unmoving, Sig watched as Dapper Bones approached him, his eyes narrowed to slits. The shopkeeper circled around him like an animal; and, like the animal’s prey, Sig could do nothing but nervously swallow his saliva and stand rooted in place, waiting for Dapper Bones to reveal whatever he was thinking.

After an agonizing wait, Dapper Bones spoke softly, “Your hand, Sig. And your eye. They’re red.”

“Eh?” Sig blinked. He glanced at his left hand, still as red as before, and he nodded, realizing that Dapper Bones hadn’t known about his transformation, “Oh. Yep. They changed last night.”

“Interesting.” Dapper Bones rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “…I like it!”

 _That_ elicits a reaction from Sig. After all, Dapper Bones was nothing if not notoriously fashion conscious. His eyes widen, and his jaw unhinges for a split second before he winds it back shut, “Eh? Really?”

“Yessir!” The shopkeeper’s grin stretches even further than Sig thought was possible, and he aims finger guns at the young boy, “The red eye and claw go marvellously with the cyan and ivory tones of your jacket! The contrast is _perfect!_ Oh, and don’t get me _started_ on the complementary tones of your bag and new accessories… Sig, forget fashion statement, you’ve made a full on fashion _declaration.”_

Sig didn’t really get it—he never really understood Oshare Bones in his fullest capacity—but he nodded politely. The shopkeeper frowned at his reaction.

“You seem a little disheartened, Sig. What’s the matter?”

“It’s, uh, nothing-“ Sig almost squeaked in fear as the skeleton leaned closer to him, his smile turning vaguely into a frown.

“Don’t give me that, Sigmund. I’ve known you for too long.”

Sig looked away, instead staring at the sky. His gaze followed the horizon, mismatched eyes basking in the beautiful day. Then, he turned back and scratched his head, wincing as he felt his left hand’s claws digging slightly into his skin.

“I’m left handed.”

A soft silence ensued. A silence that, while discomforting, was quickly broken by a sound. A noise, one that he didn’t expect: a snicker. Rapid puffs of air as the shopkeeper laughed, air rattling his bones as he wheezed and laughed. Sig’s brow furrowed.

“Ah, apologies, Sig, it’s just… I was surprised. You have quite the unexpected problem on your hands. Quite unlucky, you are!”

Somehow, that didn’t make Sig feel any better.

“Still, I’m certain that you will be fine, normal hand _or_ demon hand.”

“How do you know that?”

Dapper Bones looked shocked at Sig’s confusion. As if the answer was clear as day, and he was surprised that Sig hadn’t thought of the answer yet.

“Isn’t it obvious? You’re still the same person as you were yesterday, are you not?”

Sig opened his mouth, but Dapper Bones wasn’t done, “And before you answer, forget about your hand. Your hand isn’t you. Are you still Sig?”

Mutely, Sig nodded his head.

“Then why should your hand change anything? It is merely a change in and of itself, Sigmund. You are still you. All that matters is whether you are willing to accept the change.”

△○□×

Sig wakes the next day with a red claw for a left arm once more. As his eyes crack open and he pulled himself free from the depths, he wondered if he had dreamed everything. That his left hand wasn’t red and tipped with sharp claws, and both of his eyes were the same, ocean blue.

That dream was dashed when he lifted his left hand into view, and he saw deep red skin and sharp angles. 

Sig sighed and pushed his covers off, swinging his legs over the edge of his bed. His claw sank into the fabric of his blanket, so he made sure that his fingertips didn’t tear the cotton free from its seal.

Putting clothes on was still a little bit of a chore. The sharp ends of his left hand made it harder to zip up his favourite jacket—now he had to hold the hem of the jacket in his left hand, rather than clasping the metal zipper and zipping his coat shut. He had to be careful, or else he’d make ribbons of the coat, and possibly his shirt underneath. It was surprisingly easy to do with his left arm—he’d accidentally gouged four sharp gashes into his table when he grabbed onto it too hard, and he did _not_ want to recreate that scene with his clothes.

It only took forty minutes this time.

As he walked out the door, he caught a glimpse of his face in his reflection. Two familiarly unfamiliar mismatched eyes—one red and one blue—stared back at him.

_“Guess it did change after all.”_

The day isn’t quite as nice as yesterday. What was once an unbroken blue horizon was now overcast. Brushstrokes of grey and white mottled the sky, and a breeze was starting to pick up. It would probably rain today.

Sig saw Miss Accord on the path again today, standing by the entrance gate. Actually, he heard them first, as Popoi spotted him strolling down the path and shouted into the air.

“Oi! Sig!”

Yanked from his daydream once again, Sig gave a half-confused greeting, “Hi, Miss Accord. Popoi.”

“How are you, Sigmu-Sig?” Miss Accord asked warmly, her head tilted.

“Better,” Sig said, lifting his left arm up for her to see. “It’s different. But I’m getting used to it.”

Miss Accord nodded understandingly, “Good, good. Actually, Sig, I wanted to see you today.”

“Eh?”

“I wanted to tell you something when I next saw you. Thankfully you came this way again.”

“We’ve been standing out here for an me-hour!” Popoi chimed in, and Sig blinked in surprise.

“Why?”

Miss Accord faltered, as if she somehow hadn’t expected to come this far. Still, she soldered on, steeling herself by taking a breath, before she said, “I believe that you have magic potential.”

Sig blinked. Once. Twice. The words didn’t sink in. Miss Accord and Popoi both gave each other a glance, surprised by the boy’s lack of reaction.

Finally, after a few more minutes of too-loud silence, Sig scratched his head listlessly, “Huh. Wow.”

“That’s it? That’s the reaction we get?” Popoi complained.

“No, it’s… wow. Are you sure?” Images flew in his mind as his imagination stirred to life. Images that he once thought were dreams. Fantasies. Images of him slinging spells and feeding magic through his fingertips. Impossibilities.

Miss Accord nodded. “Absolutely. I’m not sure if this was a recent development, or if we had just never noticed it, but I can feel it emanating from you right now.”

“Whoa,” Sig was awestruck, a dazed smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Him? A _magician?_

They weren’t done yet, though.

Popoi began to shake rapidly, his mouth opening into a wide facsimile of a smile, “So! Kiddo, you got magic potential. Doesn’t mean you can toss magic around willy-nilly; not yet. No, you need to learn!”

“Learn?”

Miss Accord nodded, giggling nervously, “I’ll admit, this isn’t normally how we’d do something like this, but a case as… unique as yours merits an exception.”

“Do what?” Sig asked.

Miss Accord giggled again, before she took a deep breath to compose herself. Again, her spine went rigid and her face turned serious. A daunting air cast itself around her.

“Sig, would you like to study at the Primp Magic Academy?”

△○□×

As far as the Primp School For Magic Arts went, it was certainly a strange place.

_“Cyan!”_

That wasn’t to say that he had many experiences with it. Quite the opposite—this was his first time ever studying magic. To say that he was nervous was akin to saying that the sky was a little bit blue—a gross underestimation, to say the very least.

Still, he was no stranger to new situations. Not these past few weeks, anyway. He lived in Primp, after all.

_“Cerulean!”_

So far, his first day was going alright. Miss Accord had made him introduce himself to his classmates—people of all kinds and shapes and sizes, and he’d made a good enough impression, with his signature ghost of a smile and a wave of his red, clawed hand, “I’m Sig. Nice to meet you guys.”

“You’ve got a demon arm,” A boy with glasses and brown hair pointed out, his face the textbook picture of curiosity. Sig nodded.

“Yeah. I do.”

_“Lapis Lazuli!”_

Everyone was pretty nice to him, at least. His desk partner, a girl with bubble gum pink hair had called his arm _‘bold.’_ The brown haired boy from before called him _‘interesting.’_ Still, a school was a school, and Sig had quickly found out that even though he was new to all these magic terminologies, from incantations to ley lines, Miss Accord was extremely fond of trials by fire.

At least he’d played Puyo Puyo before—he wasn’t _completely_ hopeless against the people who had been learning it all their lives.

Still, it was exhausting. That’s why he was out here for lunch instead of his classroom, away from all of the noise—especially the loud arguments that his desk partner seemed to get into on a near-hourly basis.

He sighed, smiling as he watched a ladybug crawl up his finger, blending with the cherry hues of his arm that contrasted the straw yellow grass. He resisted the urge to laugh as its legs tickled his skin.

“Hey, Sig!”

_“Celadon!”_

He turned to the owner of the new voice. It was one of his classmates: a blonde girl, with a pink hoodie and a large red beanie with purple eyes. As she neared, he watched as the eyes on the hat turn to stars.

Huh.

“Hi, uh…” His memory failed him, stuffed to the brim with different magical terms and ideas that all accumulated to bury the names of all his classmates deep into the subconscious. Thankfully, his classmate, sensing this, offers her name.

“It’s Amitie!” She exclaimed as she skids to a halt in front of him, “I wanted to talk to you, but you disappeared after Incantations.” 

He _had_ left the room rather quickly… He shrugged, a half-hearted apology for something that was sort of his fault, “Sorry.”

“It’s okay! No harm done,” Amitie waved her arms frantically, smile trembling in panic.

Sig quirked his lip.

“Whatcha doing out here?” Amitie asked.

“Bug watching,” Sig held his left arm up, pointing to the ladybug that had by now climbed past his fingers and was resting on the back of his hand. The other girl leaned in.

“Woaahhh, it’s so cute!” She squealed, and Sig swore that the ladybug _preened_ at the compliment. Amitie turned to him, “Do you like bugs?”

“Yep,” Sig said, and they both watched as the ladybug took flight from his hand, flight path like a miniature comet as it vanished from sight, Amitie waving the bug goodbye as it blinked out of existence.

Once it had disappeared, Amitie turned to Sig, her head half tilted, “Hey, Sig, can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Was your arm always red?”

Sig blinked. Amitie, quick to notice his silence, began to panic, “Er, if you’re not comfortable, then I understand! You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to! I was curious, but I understand if you’re uncomfortable and don’t want to talk about it we can just talk about something else like bugs or magic! Yeah that’s a good idea I love magic I wanna become an amazing magician one day the absolute best and—” Amitie stopped when she heard a noise—a strange, soft tittering noise, softly wafting through the air.

She swivelled around, turning a full 360 degrees in search of the source of the noise, before she turned to Sig, who had his clawed hand over his mouth and crinkled eyes.

Realization dawned on her, “Are you laughing at me?!” Amitie asked in mock outrage, her cap quickly sprouting some angry angled lines. Despite the anger’s obvious duplicity, Sig quickly began shaking his head.

“No, no, sorry,” Sig apologised, pushing the humor out of his system, “It only turned red recently. My arm was normal before, so it feels weird.”

In a flash, the fake anger transformed into genuine curiosity, “Really?”

“Yeah,” He wound his fist shut before reopening it, trying to will his magic forward and smiling when electric blue sparks arced from his fingertips. Amitie giggled, resting her head in her palms as she watched the miniature light show.

“Hey, for what it’s worth, I think your arm is pretty cool!”

_"'Cool', huh?"_

Sig smiled.

A shrill noise pierced the air, making them both glance up. It was the school bell, he realized, signalling the end of lunch. They had… a class, of some kind next. He didn’t remember.

“Oop! We’d better head to class!” Like the cork on a bottle of wine, or perhaps an explosion, Amitie popped to her feet, “C’mon, Sig! Let’s go!”

And she was off. Like a lightning bolt streaking across the sky, she dashed off towards the entrance of the building, leaving Sig behind as he pulled himself to his feet, his mouth still pulled into that same smile as he hefted his satchel over his head and let it fall into place. Then, he was off—trotting after Amitie as he hurried back to his classroom before the second bell rang.

But not before he had quickly glanced at his left arm, opened and closed his fingers, and nodded to himself.

“Still me.”

_“COBALT!”_

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally meant to be a fun, quick one shot around a lefthanded Sig trying to acclimate to using his right hand, but it sort of metamorphosed into an alternate origin for Sig—specifically why he’s at Primp’s Magic School when he seems so laissez-faire in contrast to all the other seemingly more ambitious students. Of course, the easy (and probably correct) answer is that he’s just as interested in magic as the others, but that’s not very fun.
> 
> Sig’s name is never explicitly mentioned to be a diminutive version of anything, but a different writer whose name escapes me right now makes it short for Sigmund—a headcanon that I’ve also decided to adopt. 
> 
> Trying to come up with cat puns for Popoi was ridiculously difficult. So, like all great authors, I didn’t try.
> 
> Hopefully my portrayal of both the characters and the world of Puyo Puyo are reasonably good —if not, you’re free to shout at me on my twitter @asquickaslight. Promise I don’t bite.


End file.
